Ann Erdman is the Public Information Officer for the City of Pasadena, California.
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Friday, January 23, 2009

Waverly Students at City Hall

I'll say it again: I love giving tours to school kids. Today more than 50 middle school students from The Waverly School arrived at about noon for a visit to our grand City Hall that lasted a full hour and a half.

Ordinarily I begin tours in the courtyard, but it was muddy and wet and cold.

So we headed straight to the Council Chamber where Mayor Bill Bogaard spoke to them about his duties and how local government ticks.

City Councilman Steve Madison invited the students to spread out around the dais so they could sit in council chiars and look out onto the audience. Speaking from the public podium, he provided an age-appropriate civics lesson and took questions from these extremely savvy youngsters. I was impressed with how well thought-out their questions were.

Then I took the students down into our basement where they were able to see our Traffic Management Center through a glass wall and learn all about digital traffic management from Joaquin Siques, one of our talented traffic engineers.

After coming back upstairs for a brief description of the building and its history, plus a little chat about the Robinson Memorial across the street, the students headed back to school, each with a City Hall postcard as a memento of their visit.